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Chapter 8: A New Phase

It cannot be finished, because the process is slow. Twice a week or thrice a week you see your psychoanalyst; lying on the psychoanalyst’s couch you throw out your garbage for an hour. He listens patiently - at least he pretends that he is listening patiently. And because he is listening you go on bringing it out. He gives you encouragement, so you go on digging deeper and deeper, and you bring things from the unconscious to the conscious. His presence, his expertise, his name, his authority, make you courageous. You are not afraid of bringing things up which would scare you if you brought them up when you were alone - because you would see that you are on the verge of going mad. But his authority and his presence. And it may only be in your belief, because he himself may be more insane than you are. But you can have just the belief that he knows that he will be able to help, that he is there, so you need not be afraid; you can go and dig deep into your unconscious.

The more you bring to the conscious, the more you are freed - it is very unburdening. But once, twice or thrice a week you unburden, and the whole week you go on gathering again. The three hours’ doing is undone; you remain the same. It becomes a vicious circle. In the society, in the family, you again accumulate repressions, and you go to the analyst and you express those suppressions. A little unburdened, you are back in society - the same society, the same people. You listen to the same priest, you read the same newspaper, you go to the same political rally. You remain a Communist or you remain a Catholic. The same wife, the same husband, the same children, the same people to associate with. Again repression happens. This is a very temporary relief.

Many other ways are being found. Painting is one of the ways - far more significant, because the unconscious knows the language of pictures and not the language of words. The unconscious expresses itself in pictures. That’s why in your dreams your unconscious expresses itself more adequately. Hence the psychoanalyst wants to know more and more about your dreams. Dreams are a pictorial, primitive language, unsophisticated, more innocent. And that’s exactly what happens when you paint.

Painting is bringing your dreams out into the light - it can help tremendously. My own feeling is that if Picasso had been prevented from painting he would have gone mad. It was his painting that saved him - although he was unaware that it was his painting that was saving him. But his painting has the quality of madness in it.

If you look at a Picasso painting and meditate over it you will feel dizzy, you will feel uneasy, you will feel tense, you will not feel relaxed. And if you live in a room where Picasso paintings are on all the walls, there is every danger that you will have nightmares, or you may go mad. Those paintings will provoke your insanity.

So, you can avoid art galleries, you can bypass Picassos, but you cannot bypass the aesthetic layer of your being. You cannot bypass the aesthetic dimension; otherwise you will remain impoverished, lopsided, something will be missing in you. And I would not like anything to be missing in my sannyasins. They have to be as scientific as possible. I don’t mean - again remember - that you have to become a physicist or a chemist or a biologist or a physiologist. I don’t mean that! When I say you have to be a scientist, I mean you have to be scientific - it is a metaphor. Always remember: I am talking in metaphors and similes and parables.